Michelle Bendschneider (Connetico)
Ex-IBM and Telstra talent Michelle Bendschneider has been appointed to lead Arinco, Cevo and D6 under its newly unveiled parent company Connetico.
The news follows funding from Quadrant Growth Fund No.2, which aimed to provide the cloud service provider trio with investment and new growth opportunities, as well as a new umbrella arm.
Under Bendschneider’s leadership, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft partners will further scale to extend its “leadership in cloud services, particularly with large enterprise and government customers”.
Connetico began life in 2019 as the separate brands of Arinco and Cevo, which were founded by Nicki Bowers, Brendan Carius, Chris Padgett and David Lee.
The former duo had previously founded Melbourne-headquartered cloud services provider Kloud, which was acquired by Telstra in 2016.
Last year, the founders launched a new arm, Digi6 – or D6 – in order to “deliver the best outcomes for its customers in their acceleration and innovation in the cloud”.
The trio of companies now employs 250 people, with Bowers serving as a board director of Connetico while Carius, Padgett and Lee are both principal consultants at Arinco.
Bendschneider has held multiple senior executive roles in technology services at IBM for over 14 years, including business development, sales, consulting and professional services, where she ultimately led the Australian and New Zealand business process outsourcing division.
She also spent five years at Telstra, before moving to Commonwealth Bank to lead privacy and security technology. Most recently, she served as COO for PaperCut Software.
“I am honoured to be stepping into the role as CEO of Connetico,” said Bendschneider. “Together with the existing leadership teams at Cevo, Arinco and D6, it will be a privilege to lead and help grow this remarkable team of technologists that are at the forefront of cloud innovation in Australia.
“I am looking forward to continuing to invest in our local teams and working collaboratively with our technology partners, AWS and Microsoft, to deliver the best outcomes for our customers in their acceleration to and innovation in the cloud.”
As part of the new structure, Lara Wright, previously head of finance at Cevo, Arinco and D6, will move into the new role of CFO at Connetico.
Prior to joining the group, Wright was the finance and operations manager at Kloud Solutions, where she led the financial integration of Kloud into Telstra.
